Sisters MaryAnn Bulawa, Adia Bulawa and Lillith Bulawa have developed a hydroponic garden designed to work in the microgravity of low Earth orbit.
They are presently running a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the costs of sending the experiment to the International Space Station.
Sisters sending a garden to ISS
We are Chicks in Space, a team
of three sisters – MaryAnn Bulawa,
Adia Bulawa and Lillith Bulawa –
who are on a mission to help make
future long term space missions possible. We have grown up working on
NASA projects and challenges and
in 2012 we participated in the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Challenge.
This challenge encourages high
school students to develop unique
products that will benefit society.
Our project, a hydroponic garden, was specifically designed to
work under conditions of microgravity. A renewable food source
is essential for any long term space
mission to become a reality. We
called this the Garden of ETON - or
Extra Terrestrial Organic Nutrition.
Our garden uses centripetal force
to circulate water because traditional hydroponic gardens are
gravity driven and would not function in conditions of microgravity.
While at the Conrad Spirit of Innovation summit we were introduced to NanoRacks’ Dream Up
program. This program is designed
to help experiments like ours get
the approval of NASA for transport
to the International Space Station.
We were offered the opportunity
to launch a prototype of ETON on
the International Space Station
to test under actual conditions of
microgravity. There wer